Images of torture: ‘affective solidarity’ and the search for ransom in the global Somali community

ABSTRACT

Recent migration trends among the Somali youth and the rise of the migrant smuggling network, in Somali known as Magafe, have rendered traditional practices of solidarity ambiguous. Somali notions of solidarity have historically been a mechanism of care within the clan system. In this article, we argue that traditional practices of solidarity are challenged through the intensification of ransom collection in the Somali community. In recent years, increasing numbers of young Somali migrants have been taken captive in the deserts of Sudan and Libya. Appealing to affective responses, the Magafe network use images and sound recordings of beatings and torture to convince family members, and the wider Somali community, to pay extortionate ransoms. Based on fieldwork conducted in Somaliland in 2013, 2015 and 2021 among Somali families affected by irregular youth migration, the article finds that the willingness and ability of clan members to pay the ever-increasing sums are dwindling. Consequently, mass and social media are widely used by family members and the Magafe network alike to spread the images, sound bites and the phone numbers for money transfer. They thereby appeal to what the article conceptualizes as the ‘affective solidarity’ of the global Somali community.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• ransom
• affective solidarity
• smuggling
• Somaliland

One evening in March 2021, immediately after the news broadcast on Horn Cable TV had ended, a woman, Yusra, appeared on the screen. Her face showed clear signs of pain and distress, and tears started rolling down her face. She explained how her daughter had left Hargeisa without her knowledge and migrated through Sudan and further into Libya. In Libya, Yusra’s daughter was held hostage along with many other young Somali migrants. The smugglers demanded USD 19,000 to release Yusra’s daughter and facilitate her further journey. To make Yusra pay, the smugglers sent voice recordings and short videos of her daughter being brutally attacked. Yusra had initially collected USD 7,000, but the full amount of USD 19,000 was beyond her capacity, and she thus made a plea to the viewers consisting of Somalis in and outside of Somalia: ‘The amount of money that Magafe has requested from us at this point is beyond our capacity. This is why I am on TV asking for help and asking for all of you to show solidarity [midnimo]’.¹

This case is far from unique. Many young Somalis leave Somaliland, a self-proclaimed republic with their own government and president, but without international recognition. They cross into the deserts of Sudan and Libya towards Europe in the hope of a better future, just like Yusra’s daughter.² En route, the majority encounter demands of ransom from Magafe (roughly translated as ‘the one who never misses’), an umbrella network of migrant smugglers. We borrow the term umbrella network from Ali to emphasize that it is a loosely organised network, which is not coherent or strictly organised, but instead consists of many different agents operating on their own – but all referred to by the migrating youth and their families as Magafe.³ The network also act as debt collectors, as the youth often leave with only a few hundred dollars in their pockets, which is not enough to cover the expenses of the whole trip. Therefore, the youth owe money to the Magafe as they reach Sudan and Libya. The Magafe initially started as a network of facilitators but grew into the role of hostage-takers, and today the network spans from Somaliland all the way to Libya.⁴ Avalew shows, through his important work on migrant smuggling, how different types of criminals, such as armed gangs and robbers, kidnap migrants from smugglers that are transporting migrants across the desert.⁵ In this article, we focus only on the smugglers referred to by the affected families as Magafe.

In this article, we argue that the increasing demands for ransom have rendered traditional practices of solidarity more ambiguous as traditional clan-based solidarity is exploited by the Magafe network. Appealing to affective responses, the Magafe network uses images and sound recordings of beatings and torture to convince family members, and the wider Somali community, to pay extortionate ransoms. In this article, we conceptualize the responses to such demands for payment as ‘affective solidarity’: emotional responses created by the sensory stimuli of audio and video recordings, leading to material expressions of solidarity – the payments – that are the common goal of the Magafe and the families.

Traditionally, solidarity has been a mechanism of care within the clan system of Somali society,⁶ committing all members of the clan to take care of each other in times of need.⁷ In using the term traditional, we define it along with Höhne as ‘a sense of constant movement that points to the active and process-oriented aspect of tradition, in which the present is connected to the past in a dynamic way’.⁸ Greater Somalia, or Somalia before it was divided into the five parts of the present day, consists of six major clan families [qabil]. The Isaaq, Dir and Darood in the north (Somaliland, Puntland and Ogaden), the Hawiye, Digil and Rahanwein in South-Central Somalia. These major clan families are divided into clans. One clan consists of 20,000-120,000 people and is divided into sub-clans and sometimes the sub-sub clans defined by Ioan Lewis as primary lineages and diya-paying groups.⁹ In Somaliland, the main clan family is the Isaaq, and various clans and sub-clans are spread throughout the country. In the Somali community, the clan family functions as a specific kind of social contract meaning that ‘Somalis are dependent on their kinship linage for security and protection, responsibilities, duties, rights and liabilities’.¹⁰ Consequently, ‘the clan is collectively responsible for actions of its individual members’.¹¹ The solidarity of clan members is considered the most reliable mechanism during times of crisis and is also deeply intertwined with Islam. This includes practices of zakat/zakaad (one of the five pillars of Islam and an obligatory yearly charity of a specified amount, intended to support and uplift poor individuals) and sadaqah (a voluntary payment given to poor individuals to seek reward from Allah (God), with no limits or requirements of the amount given).¹² The emotional and material support given to parents like Yusra, and thousands of others by their fellow Somalis is a result of Somali traditional solidarity midnimo, according to Hassan, the father of a young man who had also migrated and was now held in captivity by the Magafe:

Helping each other is normal among the Somali people. It is common to help each other, like whenever there is a problem, such as a natural disaster, like droughts, people naturally help each other, or when a person is sick they also help that person, and anyone can contribute whatever he or she can afford.¹³

With the increasing number of migrants, the Magafe have realised the possibilities of exploiting the traditional practices of solidarity. Relying on the networks of midnimo, the Magafe extort larger sums of money from the Somali community than any single family would be able to pay. As we will see in the following, the parents and their peers usually do not agree with the young Somalis’ decision to migrate. Hence, many would be hesitant to pay upfront for travel expenses. However, the affective environment created through mass and social media, where horrible images and recordings are shared, creates an emotional response in many, leading them to pay for the release of the young migrants despite their apprehensions. Concomitantly, the exorbitant sums requested by the hostage-takers have forced midnimo out of the framework of the clan and into the global Somali community. We thus argue that traditional Somali practices of clan-based solidarity are challenged through the intensification of youth migration and the development of the Magafe network.

The article is a result of a decade of close collaboration between Anja Simonsen and Mohamed Tarabi as we have followed the young Somali generation on their journey into unknown terrain, trying to escape what they considered ‘social death’; unemployment, the lack of education and not being able to marry.¹⁴ In 2013, 2015 and 2021, we conducted interviews with parents whose children had migrated without their knowledge and/or approval and had been taken hostage by the Magafe network. Many of the interviewed parents had turned to mass and social media in the hope of collecting the ransom money. Like Yusra, featured in the opening vignette, they had appealed to the global Somali community hoping for them to show midnimo. Conducting fieldwork among people in deep crises raised several concerns and challenges. Many parents refused to be interviewed at all, as they feared the consequences of talking to us. This meant that we had only a limited number of interlocutors. For the ones who agreed to participate, we had to consider the emotional effects of talking about the potential loss of their children. We highlighted that they could stop the interview at any time and that they were not obliged in any way to answer our questions. We also made sure to take a break if the interviewee showed signs of stress. We, in other words, thought with emotions as part of our interview methodology. This approach is inspired by recent research on an ethics of care, which focuses on how not to cause unnecessary distress or harm to interviewees through interview practices.¹⁵

Oral exchange is the traditional way of gathering knowledge within the Somali community.¹⁶ With limited available research on the theme of migrant smuggling and ransom collection in a Somali context, we methodologically engaged in collecting oral history defined as ‘the systematic collection of living people’s testimony about their own experiences’.¹⁷ In this context, history is defined very broadly as ‘everything that happened before this moment in time’.¹⁸ Additionally, we have used a webnografic approach,¹⁹ analysing cases on social media, like the videos posted by Hodan and Riyaan. These videos, and the responses to them on social media, have been a tool for us to explore and experience the affective atmosphere created in the Somali online community. To secure the anonymity of our interlocutors, and thereby protect them and their families, we use pseudonyms in this article. Furthermore, we do not share the direct links to the specific audio and video clips, but just mention the social media platform where they were shared.

‘Affective solidarity’

This article contributes to understanding local notions of solidarity in a Somali migratory context with a renewed focus on ‘lived experiences, immediate social networks and infrastructures of mobility that frame migrants’ journeys’.²⁰ Through the concept of ‘affective solidarity’, we argue that traditional practices of solidarity are challenged and transformed amid external pressures, social media and the contestation of intergenerational contracts.

We build on a vast body of literature that has explored practices of mutual migrant aid and support within African societies. Scholars of the Manchester school of thought, like Gluckman and Mitchell, have taught us that in the context of African urbanism, ‘the new African urban labourer remained bound by social, political and even religious ties to his kinsmen in the rural areas’.²¹ Little, in 1957, highlighted how many West Africans moving to urban settings were influenced by loyalties and obligations within the rural context.²² He illustrated how rural-urban migration could be seen, among other things, as a social practice of mutual aid. While aid and social support played an important role for the urban labourer, it could also take on new expressions in urban contexts in the form of what Mitchell and Epstein have called ‘urban tribalism’.²³ This term refers to the social organisation of urban relationships, including the creation and structure of voluntary associations, like aid or burial societies, according to tribal divisions.²⁴ The abovementioned scholars, later echoed by Silverstein, argued ‘that urban tribal affiliations took on new meanings as categorical markers of identification rather than social structures’,²⁵ which is why they focused on ‘the differentiation of social fields when studying identity formation’.²⁶

Scholars like Mitchell, Little, Epstein and Gluckman thus sparked a scholarly interest in practices of mutual aid and support in contexts of internal migration and urbanisation in African societies many years ago. This interest has continued, also focusing on the theme in non-migrant contexts. For instance, an edited volume by Tostensen, Tvedten and Vaa examines the many different voluntary associations that have arisen in recent years in cities across 16 African countries. In response to increasing poverty and a lack of sustainable infrastructure and government services, these voluntary associations act as (in)formal aid and support networks focusing on day-to-day support while also engaging in more long-term urban development.²⁷ In France, Silverstein defines such community-making across diverse spatial fields as ‘everyday transnationalism’ among French men and women of colour.²⁸ Furthermore, a significant amount of literature explores solidarity within burial societies. Ngwenya, in the context of Botswana, demonstrates how burial societies use the practices of providing emergency support – financial and non-financial – to strengthen social relations between family and kin.²⁹ Stuer et al. show how, in Ethiopia, traditional burial societies have developed into mutual aid organisations and have come to embrace broader social needs as people practice care and protection for their communities, with a special focus on vulnerable children.³⁰

Building on this vast literature on migrant and non-migrant mutual aid and support within African societies, we examine the development that traditional Somali support systems have undergone in the context of more recent migration practices – specifically that of tahriib. To do that, we introduce affect as a crucial analytical lens.

Social science has given much attention to the concept of affect after the so-called ‘affective turn’, which arose in the mid-1990s.³¹ Initially, affect was defined as a pre-individual bodily force, emphasising affect as ‘prepersonal and nonconscious’,³² which was separated from emotions defined as after-thoughts or private matters.³³ We are inspired by later work by feminist scholars, like Teresa Brennan and Linda Åhäll, who argue against the separation of affect and emotion. Åhäll approaches the concept of affect by arguing that ‘the individual emotional experience cannot be separated from the social environment’.³⁴ We are particularly interested in what Brennan calls the ‘affective atmosphere’,³⁵ which is ‘that feeling that you get when you walk into a room and sense a particular mood in the air’.³⁶ According to Brennan, this means that ‘the emotions or affect of one person, and the enhancing or depressing energies these affects entail, can enter into another’.³⁷ This is important for our definition of ‘affective solidarity’, which we use to describe the way audio and video recordings shared on social media can transmit affective atmospheres through sensory stimuli. These affective atmospheres create emotional responses in individuals across the global Somali community, leading them to engage in practices of material solidarity by contributing to paying the ransom demanded by the Magafe.

In the context of migration, other scholars have shown how European and African governments use affect and emotions as a form of affective borderwork in trying to hinder migration.³⁸ Josh Watkins and Ida Marie Vammen have shown how international organisations, like the IOM, create awareness campaigns aimed at potential migrants and smugglers.³⁹ Through a form of moral geography, where European perspectives are dominant, the organisations try to use emotions as a tool to define irregular migration as morally wrong. In this article, we are inspired by the affective and emotional tools described by Watkins and Vammen, yet we bring these tools into the local perspectives of migrants and their families. In this context, we will show how affect is used – not to prevent migration practices – but to motivate migration and facilitate the continuation of interrupted journeys. We position ourselves within the migration literature that highlights the ‘importance of developing an empirical and conceptual space that is attentive to the brokers and infrastructures that make migration possible’.⁴⁰ One example is the work of Johan Lindquist in Indonesia and Southeast Asia on migration infrastructures and brokerage. Another example is the work of Peter Tinti and Tuesday Reitano, who explore how people-smuggling networks work, how they have evolved and their impact on migration and transnational crime.⁴¹ Finally, Ruben Andersson’s work focuses on the whole industry emerging around migration from Africa to Europe.⁴² Thereby, we emphasise that migration is socially embedded and must be understood ‘as a system in the making’.⁴³

Limited ethnographic research exists on how ransoms are collected in Somalia. One example is Jatin Dua’s work on Somali pirates and their demands for ransom.⁴⁴ Another is Nimo Ilhan Ali’s report, which provides data on Somali families left behind, descriptions of the Magafe, and the difficulties facing Somali families when young Somalis migrate.⁴⁵ Finally, the work of Tekalign Ayalew on the organisation of refugee journeys from the Horn of Africa towards Europe shows that migrant smuggling must be understood as a social practice.⁴⁶ Contributing to this literature, we focus specifically on the perspective of the migrants’ families in a Somali context, showing the dynamics influencing traditional societal practices of solidarity. Additionally, we seek to carve out the development of the Magafe network. Originating as a network of students facilitating travel arrangements, food and internet access for migrants and developing into a widespread migrant smuggler umbrella network, the Magafe now collect debts and demand ransoms from families of the increasing number of migrants captured in the deserts of Sudan and Libya. We show how local understandings and practices of solidarity, or midnimo, have influenced and been influenced by the emergence of this network.

Historical development of youth migration

Migrants have travelled different routes out of Somalia. In this article, we are mainly concerned with the Western route through Ethiopia, Sudan and Libya. Given the very strict immigration policies implemented in, across and beyond Europe today, the youth cannot travel through regular routes.⁴⁷ They have to make use of smugglers and facilitators, and this is one of the factors leading to the emergence of the Magafe network.

In the late 1990s to early 2000s, the early days of youth migration along this route, anecdotal evidence suggests that the youth mainly arranged and facilitated their migration through family members, friends and Somali students already based in the countries of transit. Most of the journey through the desert was made on foot, and one of the biggest threats facing them was the rough, unfriendly landscape and the risk of dehydration. Some migrants experienced theft and violence en route. In some cases, local Sudanese and Libyan facilitators would threaten their way to payments, while some migrants faced organised gangs that attacked and robbed groups of migrants.

Abdirizak, a Somali man studying in Sudan from 2008 to 2010, describes the beginning of his role as facilitator in Sudan as a coincidence and as an act of solidarity among the Somali students:

I started in 2008 as a facilitator – when I lived in Sudan. One morning, I was going to the University at 7 am and when I returned, a group of Somalis had been picked up in the desert by Sudanese people, who had stolen from them. We as students contributed 50 dollars each to help them. After this, I began to help my people because the Sudanese people are robbers. From that day, I was studying at the university in Khartoum during the day, and at night I was working by facilitating the travel towards Europe for other Somalis. I was 26 years old at the time.⁴⁸

According to Abdirizak, his actions were motivated by wanting to help his Somali brothers and sisters, which he did in various ways. He and his fellow facilitators would pick up the migrants from various locations, and before sending them off towards Libya, they would give them food and provide them with access to the internet. All ‘to make them happy’, as Abdirizak explained.

During the 2000s, a network of facilitators like Abdirizak formed along the route to Libya. They became known among Somalis as Mukhalas, an Arabic term meaning Mukh (a faithful) and alas (guide). While this network was new, the use of a facilitator or a middleman, known traditionally as Dilaal in Somali, had a long tradition. The Dilaal is usually someone who facilitates the negotiation between a buyer and seller, or who spends time searching for an item for someone in the marketplace. Traditionally, the services of a Dilaal were either free of charge or would cost a small amount of money. The same holds true for the early Mukhalas network. The Mukhalas would inform the migrants about the right path to take, for example from Hargeisa all the way to Libya by showing the borders visually on a map. They would direct migrants to a Mukhalas at their next destination and provide information on which parts of the journey could be undertaken by bus. In Libya, the Mukhalas would direct the migrants to the boats waiting to take them across the Mediterranean and into Europe.

Buses along the route and the boat from Libya cost money, but otherwise, the migrants were not obliged to pay the Mukhalas. Many migrants still chose to pay small amounts for their services. From there, anecdotal evidence suggests, Somali students, along with stranded migrants and local Sudanese and Libyan collaborators, started to see economic opportunities in their network of facilitation. Some Somali students started working as translators, or they started charging increasing fees for the services previously provided for free. At the same time, the network expanded to include Somali students in Ethiopia and in Somaliland. These students would earn pocket money from referring their friends, who wanted to migrate, to the other Mukhalas along the route. Even though the fees were modest in comparison to expenses along the route today, some migrants could not afford the expenses. Abdirizak describes how he would still facilitate travel for these individuals:

When the groups of Somalis arrived, then for each ten people who arrived, they would all come from different backgrounds, so my belief was that from out of a group of ten people, at least seven people would be able to pay me, and then the last three I would help to pass without payment.⁴⁹

Abdirizak’s reasoning was based on the Somali notion of solidarity – midnimo – where people who have assets contribute to the ones who are experiencing some sort of crisis, including poverty. But it becomes clear that, in the case of the Mukhalas, midnimo, which was traditionally practiced primarily within the clan system, was extended to include all Somalis, regardless of clan affiliation.

In Abdirizak’s own words, he felt a moral and religious obligation to help the Somali migrants: ‘At the time I was working, I helped a lot of people who were dying [due to poverty and war] and I thought I was getting points from God’. Concomitantly, Abdirizak felt responsible for the safety of the migrants. He would collect information from the migrants as to whether his Sudanese and Libyan colleagues were treating them well. If not, he stopped collaborating with them. Both of these points hint at a solidarity based on shared nationality, ethnicity and religion, also found in the research of Tekalign Ayalew among migrants and refugees from the Horn of Africa.⁵⁰

Between August and October 2011, approximately 3,500 young women and men left Somaliland heading towards Libya, according to the IOM.⁵¹ In November 2013, a UNHCR-commissioned study on mixed migration estimated that between 500 and 3,000 people crossed the Somaliland-Ethiopia border each month en route to Libya.⁵² As the number of migrants – and the network of facilitators – continued to grow, things started to change. The practices of migrant smugglers along the route between Somalia and Libya turned very violent, in many instances deadly, as a growing number of groups and individuals sought to profit from the migrants. Concomitantly, the amounts demanded for travel facilitation increased, and the way the smugglers collected the money changed.

Mukhalas, like Abdirizak, had facilitated the journey towards Europe, even for individuals without financial means, as an act of solidarity. Such practices were replaced by acts of violence and group pressure forcing everyone in a group to pay. The migrants were beaten while calling their families at home begging them to pay the ever-increasing sums demanded by the smugglers. If even one person in the group could not pay, no one would be released. Such practices turned the Mukhalas into Magafe in Somali terminology. Magafe is defined as ‘the one who never misses’ meaning that every migrant will have to pay Magafe at some point along the journey, often more than once. Young Somalis even prepare themselves ahead of migration on how to survive encounters with Magafe.⁵³ Abdirizak experienced the transition of the network from Mukhalas into Magafe this way:

When I was working in Sudan, I was not illiterate. I read the Quran and according to our religion, it is forbidden to do this business, but I tried to help the people if they did not have anything. When the facilitation became a big business, I got scared and I left the business.⁵⁴

In fact, Abdirizak left Sudan with nothing, except his education. He had to call his mother to ask for USD 200 for his ticket home, and so he returned to Somaliland without a dollar in his pocket. Whether or not Abdirizak is representative of the Mukhalas in leaving the business of facilitation, we do not know. But his story illustrates how the practices of solidarity of the Mukhalas were replaced by the violence and big business of Magafe. This shift put an increasing amount of pressure on the families and clan members of the migrants, and hence on traditional notions of solidarity in Somali society. Importantly, this notion of solidarity includes a strong sense of socio-economic responsibility towards the family, which can be described as an intergenerational contract. The next section discusses the disparities between the young Somalis and their parents in their understanding of how to best uphold this contract.

Tahriib: making or breaking the intergenerational contract

The intergenerational contract refers to the economic and moral bond between parents and their children, where the roles of providing and being provided for are expected to shift as the child enters adulthood.⁵⁵ This theme has been widely discussed in different geographical and socio-economic contexts.⁵⁶ Yet, Pedersen rightly criticises the previous literature for its tendency to approach intergenerational contracts mainly through the perspective of the young, thus positioning the older generation through the young people’s framework. By introducing the parents’ perspectives on and experiences of youth migration and practices of solidarity, we intend to give voice to the older generation in their own right.

In a Somali context, the youth and their parents agreed that the intergenerational contract was important. In Somali society, the elderly depend on the young for financial and physical care, and the youths, we encountered during our years of research, all felt obliged to care for their aging parents, who had provided for them throughout their childhood. Many of the young Somalis explained that they had undertaken migration, or planned to do so, to take care of their families.

Remittances from family members abroad could have tremendous effects on individual household economies. Estimates suggest that Somalia received remittances amounting to USD 1.4bn in 2016 alone. Receiving households generally collected amounts ranging from USD 50 to more than USD 300 per month.⁵⁷ The young Somalis were very aware of how living abroad could lift the household economy for the families left behind while allowing them to pursue their dreams of education, jobs and marriage. Migration, in other words, was seen by the youth as a way to uphold the intergenerational contract.

Taban, a young Somali man, grew up in a household without a father. As the oldest child, he carried the main economic responsibility for the family, but he did not have a lot of financial opportunities. Taban described what it was like to be coming of age and not being able to fulfil the social obligations that came along with adulthood:

My mother brought me up, since my father died when I was very young, and when I grew up as an adult, I was thinking how I would economically sponsor my mother, because at this stage of my life I cannot expect economic support from my mother. Since I could not get a job here, I decided to leave and get better life conditions over there [in Saudi Arabia].⁵⁸

As Taban was getting older, he was expected to start contributing to the family. He left Somaliland in an attempt to uphold the intergenerational contract, despite this being against his mother’s will. In fact, when Simonsen was introduced to Taban, he had returned to Hargeisa and his family was surveilling him to prevent him from migrating again.

Many parents, like Taban’s mother, did not want their children to migrate. Some even argued that tahriib was against their religious beliefs, as it is forbidden according to Islam to throw your life away. Therefore, you should only risk your life if you were fleeing from a country at war.⁵⁹ The children knew that their parents and family members did not agree that tahriib was the best way of upholding the intergenerational contract. Consequently, many young Somalis left the country without telling their families.

Hodan’s son had left on 1 May 2013, approximately two months before Simonsen met her. Hodan was visibly upset, as she related her experience of the days of her son’s departure:

That night he did not come home. Instead, he called his abti [maternal uncle] saying that he was at a wedding and not to worry. It was a Tuesday and when he did not arrive Wednesday by lunchtime, alarm bells started to ring. He switched off the phone after lunchtime, so by then, we realised he was doing tahriib. This was my only child. He left Tuesday, and Thursday he called his abti from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and said: ‘I’m leaving’. His abti said ‘come back, your mother is in a coma’. He replied: ‘I’m going, pray for me’.⁶⁰

In the middle of Thursday night, Hodan’s brother brought the phone to her. Her son had called again. ‘I said to my son: “there is nothing for you there, come back”. He refused and said: “pray for me”’. Again, Sunday they spoke and her son said: ‘I’m going’ and then an Ethiopian took the phone. For 15 days, Hodan and her brother had no news. Suddenly, the son contacted them again. This time, he was held captive by the Magafe network. He explained where he was and that he needed USD 2,200 to be released. Then he pleaded: ‘we don’t get water and food if you don’t send the money’. ⁶¹ Hodan cried, while she explained:

When he talked to us, they had just beaten him so he was very stressed […] We had to borrow money from the family to pay. It took five days for me to collect the money. The day he left Addis Ababa, I started to collect money and I asked everyone. I also asked the abti to send USD 50, but he still has not sent it to this day.⁶²

Hodan sent the USD 2,200, but her son remained in captivity for 10–15 days, until he was released in early June 2013. Hodan explained:

When we called the number through which we had communicated with our son before his release, Magafe did not pick up the phone because now they had the money, they did not care. One of the boys in the group, who my son was with, called his sister and told her what had happened to them, including my son, and I gained the information from her.⁶³

Hodan learned that many of the young people had died upon release, including her son. Some had been shot by the Magafe, but her son was involved in a car accident after his release and died of his injuries. Hodan did not see migration as the right way for her son to uphold the social contract, quite the contrary. For her, as for the majority of the parents we interviewed, migration broke the contract, as the young Somalis risked their lives en route. The families often did whatever they could to prevent the young women and men from leaving or to persuade them to return. Hodan believed that engaging in the practices of midnimo, and collecting money for the Magafe, was the best way to get her son back. Unfortunately, like many mothers of young migrants, she never saw her son again.

Hodan’s story illustrates how Somali practices of midnimo unintentionally make the Magafe network successful. Hodan managed to collect USD 2,200 within five days, through her family networks. If her son had asked for this money before his departure, she would never have been willing to collect it for him, as she did not want him to leave. Nor would any of her family members or wider networks have been willing to pay without the threats to the boy’s life. With the violent ‘leave now – pay later scheme’,⁶⁴ the optional payments of the Mukhalas are history. The Magafe make sure to get their money from every member of the group.

Youth migration is a point of contention between the generations in Somalia. It is not a question of whether there is an intergenerational contract to uphold but whether tahriib makes or breaks that contract. In too many cases, lives are lost en route and the contract is definitively broken. Yet, the young Somalis are still willing to risk it all in search of a better life and the opportunity to support their families. In the following section, the article argues that social media play an important role in promoting the images of this better life and in collecting the money necessary to continue the many journeys interrupted by the Magafe.

The role of social media in promoting and facilitating migration

Social media, and the transfer of affective atmospheres, have come to play a very important role in the context of youth migration. For young people in Somalia contemplating the idea of migration, social media platforms, like Facebook, are essential in turning experiences of ‘social death’ at home into ‘social hope’ for a future abroad.⁶⁵ During a joint interview with the General Director for Higher Education and two employees from the Interior Ministry of Somaliland, the General Director explained to Simonsen that:

technology is a big problem, they [the youth] go to the Facebook and see the pictures and say to themselves: ‘What are you doing in Somalia? Go to Europe’ … people leave for jobs and the Facebook opportunities.⁶⁶

Many of our young Somali interlocutors agreed that social media played a role in their ideas of migration. Taban for example, highlighted the negative effects of chatting with his peers in Europe on Facebook. He felt that the recent increase in youth migration was due to communication between friends living in Europe and those still in Somaliland. The young Somalis in Europe would ask: ‘Are you still there?’ Thus suggesting that their friends should follow. Taban pointed out that the poverty of people in Somaliland had been the same for many years and did not explain the increase in migration. What had changed was the way young people influenced each other via social media. Geeldone depicts in an autobiography how friends, who had started doing tahriib as a result of the failure of family members abroad to sponsor them, would post pictures online depicting a better life in Europe.⁶⁷ These pictures made him realise what he was missing, like education, and how he was wasting his time back home. Taban’s friends would ask him whether he was still drinking tea in the same spot, where they sat together before they left. Such comments made Taban feel like he was wasting his time. His friends would tell him: ‘Baddii imika mar mar ayay noqotay oo durduro ayaad kaga tallaabaysaa ee soo bax oo iska soo dul mar’ [The sea has turned into trails. Why don’t you just walk on it?]’. This meant that the sea was easy to cross, Taban explained. Then he added: ‘At this time I don’t feel anything, but before sometimes when I heard from them, I used to pass sleepless nights nagging myself, why are you here [in Somaliland]?’⁶⁸ Images and conversations on social media thus promoted tahriib and inspired increasing numbers of young Somalis to leave their families. This led to the development and growth of the Magafe network. As discussed in this article, the Magafe relied on traditional Somali notions of solidarity to collect extortionate ransoms. In doing so, they challenged those same notions of solidarity and moved the practice of collecting money from clan-based networks to the global social media landscape.

As the Magafe’s business grew, they needed to reinvent themselves, and they did that, we argue, by using sensory stimuli,⁶⁹ in the form of audio and video recordings. After the initial appeal to parental feelings and torn hearts of family members, social media were used, by the Magafe and the parents alike, to convey the affective atmosphere of ‘forced separation, what feelings it engendered and what it did to people’s lives’.⁷⁰

Through the social media platforms, these affective atmospheres – and the appeals for ransom money – reached the global Somali community. This significantly increased the prospects of earning money through ransom, leading to a vicious circle of more captures and higher ransom demands. In a video on Facebook, Riyaan, a Somali mother, explained how she encountered these exorbitant demands:

Riyaan’s 15-year-old son, the oldest of her children, migrated without her knowledge. Riyaan explained how her son had initially called her every night after being taken into captivity. Telling his mother how he was beaten every night, he would say: ‘send more money, Hooyo [Mother]’. The Magafe had initially asked for USD 8,800 to release her son. Not being able to pay, Riyaan decided to walk the streets of Galkayo, Puntland, with a sign saying: ‘Waa Hooyo Cawiya Walaalyal [She is a mother, help her, brothers and sisters]’. She managed to collect USD 500 and asked the Magafe if they would accept the USD 500 for the sake of Allah. They refused but said that they would accept USD 3,300. Riyaan did not have that amount of money, and she responded that she hoped they would give her time to collect the money from her Muslim sisters and brothers. For the next seven months, she did not know of her son’s whereabouts, until she saw a video posted of him on Facebook by the Magafe. The video showed her son being whipped and beaten while screaming ‘Hooyo macaaney’ [sweet Mother].⁷¹

The Magafe network produced the voice recordings, images and video clips of the young people being tortured and then sent ransom demands to the parents. But they also went further and spread their productions to a broader audience through social media. Conveniently they always added a phone number to transfer donations for the youth’s release.

The recordings of Riyaan’s son being tortured, uploaded on Facebook by the Magafe, made Riyaan contact Somali national TV. Like Yusra from the opening vignette, Riyaan appealed to her Muslim sisters and brothers to help collect the ransom money: ‘I don’t know whether he is dead or alive. I cry all the time. There is nothing I can do’. The video of her son being tortured was also shown, and the phone number for money transfers was shared. A recording of her appearance on TV was then uploaded and shared numerous times on Facebook.

Another parent, Hassan, who had made similar appeals for money to have his son released, explained how he was met with sympathy from his surroundings. Even people who could not afford to contribute financially, ‘they wished for me that Allah will release my son from the enemy and showed that they were very sorry for me and my family’.⁷² Cases like the ones of Yusra, Riyaan and Hassan illustrate the concept of affective solidarity, which ‘capture[s] the way the transactions that constitute them often combine material and emotive elements simultaneously’.⁷³ In this particular context, love, obligation and solidarity are all entangled with the circulation of money.

In sum, social media involved sensory stimuli. For the youth, the images and videos posted on Facebook by their peers in Europe created feelings of hope and at the same time desperation and agony as to why they were still in Somaliland, which made them risk their lives in the attempt to migrate. For the Somali parents and the global Somali community, the videos, images and soundbites of (their) children being whipped, beaten and starved also provided sensory stimuli – creating feelings of sadness, desperation and pain. Social media, in other words, were very ambiguous as they created both hope and despair for the youth and their parents, while being a business tool for the Magafe – a tool to encourage practices of ‘affective solidarity’. These affective practices thus ‘make possible, and carry with them, specific culturally and historically elaborated emotions and potentialities’ in this case of solidarity, ‘as well as the material manifestations of these feelings’, namely money.⁷⁴

Conclusion

Based on the specific role that ‘affective solidarity’ plays in circumventing the reluctance of the older generation of family and clan members to pay for the youth’s migration practices, we conclude that emic notions of solidarity shape and are shaped by practices of migration.

Traditional notions of solidarity have been a driver first for the increasing youth migration, as the youth seek to uphold the intergenerational contract, and second for the development of the Magafe network, as the tradition of collective responsibility and solidarity allowed for larger payments than any smaller family unit would be able to pay. Concomitantly, the practices of youth migration continue to challenge those same notions of solidarity. From being primarily a responsibility to care for poor and unfortunate individuals within the clan system, midnimo now spans the global Somali community.

Based on this development, we have shown how three groups of actors – the Somali youth, the Magafe network and the older Somali generation – engage in ‘affective solidarity’ but from very different positions. By the Somali youth from Somaliland, migration is often described as an act of solidarity – as caring for the family and striving to live up to the socio-economic responsibilities of adulthood. Their decisions to migrate are often inspired by social media, where the Somali youth who have made it to Europe will post pictures that indicate wealth and success, creating affective responses of longing and hope among the local Somali youth who worry about not fulfilling their obligations or reaching their goals for the future.

The Magafe network started as a network of solidarity, facilitating youth migration along the route from Somaliland through the deserts of Sudan and Libya with little or no payment. Gradually, the network started claiming payment for their work by collecting ever-increasing ransoms from the families of the migrants. The traditional Somali solidarity, midnimo, has been challenged by the increased youth migration and the emergence of the Magafe network. The rising number of migrants and the increasingly exorbitant sums demanded by the hostage-takers have challenged the willingness and ability of the older generation to pay for the migration practices of the young. As Hassan points out: ‘Somalis are a bit reluctant to pay towards youth migration [tahriib] and the collection of ransom compared to other occasions’.⁷⁵

In response to this reluctance, the Magafe have increased their use of sensory stimuli, through audio and video recordings of torture and violence sent to close family members, as a means to securing their income. Sometimes the Magafe will even post such recordings directly on social media. These violent appeals to ‘affective solidarity’ are thus spread throughout the global Somali diaspora, either by the Magafe or by the desperate family members who are unable to pay the ransom on their own. The emotional responses to watching or hearing your child being violently assaulted are being shared in emotional appeals by parents through mass and social media in the hope of material expressions of solidarity – the payments – that are the common goal of the Magafe and the families, though for very different reasons.

The ‘affective solidarity’ thus comes full circle, as images and videos on social media first inspired the hope and longing of so many young Somalis to embark on the dangerous journey to Europe as a means to uphold their intergenerational contract. Later, very different videos and soundbites are shared by their families, despite their resistance to the idea of youth migration, to appeal to the solidarity of the global Somali community to collect ransom money and allow the young Somalis to complete their journey. Despite their disparities, the different types of ‘affective solidarity’ engaged in by the three groups of actors all have the same outcome: the continuation and increase of Somali youth migration.

Acknowledgement

The authors thankfully acknowledge the valuable time that Somali families in Somaliland have spent with us, sharing their experiences of migration and painful losses.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The data collected for this article was made possible due to the funding by FKK (Det Frie Forskningsråd – kultur og kommunikation) for Anja Simonsen’s PhD as part of ‘the Invisible Lives project – A Comparative ethnography of undocumented migration, the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen’.

Notes

1 March 2021, broadcasted immediately after the news broadcast on Horn Cable TV, watched by Tarabi, Hargaisa.

2 Simonsen, “Crossing (Biometric) Borders.”

3 Ali, “Going on Tahriib.”

4 Ibid, 24.

5 Ayalew, “En route to Exile.”

6 In this article, we use clan and kinship interchangeably.

7 Lewis, “Blood and Bone.”

8 Höhne, “From Pastoral to State Politics,” 156.

9 Lewis, “Blood and Bone,” 20.

10 Gundel, “The Predicament of the ‘Oday,’” iii.

11 Ibid.

12 Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, the Federal Government of Somalia, https://molgov.so/

13 Interview with a father, whose son had migrated, Hargaisa, 2021.

14 Simonsen, Tahriib: Journeys into the Unknown.

15 Birch et al., “Introduction to Second Edition”; Leahy, “The Afterlife of Interviews.”

16 In this article, we refer to this as anecdotal evidence. Warsame, “How a Strong Government Backed an African Language,” 343; Andrezejewski, “Poetry in Somali Society”; Gardner et al., “Introduction in Somalia,” xiii.

17 Moyer, “Step-by-Step Guide to Oral History.”

18 Palys et al., “Research Decisions.”

19 Albris et al., “At være online: Webnografi og digitale metoder.”

20 Ciabarri and Simonsen, “Fragments of Solidarity,” 1.

21 Epstein et al., “Urbanization and Social Change,” 279.

22 Little, “The Role of Voluntary Associations,” 580.

23 Mitchell, “the kalela dance”; Epstein, “Policies in an urban African Community.”

24 Epstein et al., “Urbanization and Social Change,” 281; Little, “The Role of Voluntary Associations,” 582.

25 Silverstein, “Race, Islam and the Future of the Republic,” 31.

26 Ibid

27 Tostensen et al., “Associational Life in African Cities.”

28 Silverstein, “Postcolonial France,” 32.

29 Ngwenya, “Redefining kin and family social relations.”

30 Stuer et. al, “From Burial Societies to Mutual Aid Organizations.”

31 Clough et al. “The Affective Turn.”

32 Åhäll, “Affect as Methodology,” 40.

33 Ahmed, “The Promise of Happiness,” 230; Vammen, “When Migrants Become Messengers,” 5.

34 Åhäll, “Affect as Methodology,” 40.

35 Brennan, “The Transmission of Affect,” 3.

36 Brennan in Åhäll, “Affect as Methodology,” 40.

37 Brennan, “The Transmission of Affect,” 3.

38 Carling et al., “Aspiration, Desire and Drivers of Migration.”

39 Watkins, “Irregular Migration, Borders, and Moral Geographies,” Vammen, “When Migrants Become Messengers.”

40 Lindquist et al. “Introduction: Opening the Black Box of Migration”; Xiang et al. “Migration Infrastructure”; Lindquist, “Infrastructures of Escort,” 174.

41 Tinti et al. “Migrant, Refugee, Smuggler, Saviour.”

42 Andersson, Illegality, Inc.

43 Lindquist, “Infrastructures of Escort,” 174.

44 Dua, “Captured at Sea, Dua, Hijacked.”

45 Ali, “Going on Tahriib.”

46 Ayalew, “Struggle for Mobility”; Ayalew, “En route to Exile”; Ayalew, “Precarious Mobility”; Ayalew, “The Smuggling of Migrants.”

47 Olwig et al., “The Biometric Border World.”

48 Interview with former facilitator of irregular migration, Hargaisa, 2013.

49 Ibid.

50 Ayalew, “En route to Exile.”

51 Ali, “Going on Tahriib,” 11.

52 Ibid.

53 Simonsen, “Tahriib: Journey’s into the Unknown.”

54 Interview with former facilitator of irregular migration, Hargaisa, 2013.

55 Pedersen, “You Want Your Children to Become Like You,” 128.

56 Barakat, “The Arab Family”; Stafford, “Chinese Patriliny”; Whyte et al., “Generational Connections and Conflicts”; Pedersen, “You Want Your Children to Become Like You.”

57 Majid et al., “Remittances and Vulnerability in Somalia.”

58 Interview with a young man, a former migrant, Hargaisa, 2013.

59 Ali, “Going on Tahriib.”

60 Interview with a mother whose son had done tahriib, Hargaisa, 2013.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid.

63 Ibid.

64 Ali, “Going on Tahriib,” 24.

65 Simonsen “Tahriib: Journey’s into the Unknown.”

66 Interview with the General Director, Interior Ministry of Somaliland, Hargaisa, 2013.

67 Geeldoon, “We Kissed the Ground,” 45-46.

68 Interview with Taban, Hargaisa, 2013.

69 Cole et al., “Introduction: Affective Circuits and Social Regeneration.”

70 Stoler, “Affective States,” 15.

71 Video, Facebook, analysed 2021.

72 Interview with Hassan, Hargaisa, 2021.

73 Cole et al., “Introduction: Affective Circuits and Social Regeneration,” 8.

74 Ibid.

75 Interview with Hassan, Hargaisa, 2021.